Cool explanation of proletarian vs non-proletarian labor, and productive vs non-productive labor, from a classical Marxist view.

Sharing an essay from user Nodrada on Medium that I thought was an insightful Marxist perspective on gender. I am very curious what my trans/nonbinary friends think about this. I'm cisgender and still learning about these issues.

The gist of the essay is that certain forms of radical feminism are flawed and even damaging. The first, obvious form is the trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) whose flaws speak for itself. The second form is the "liberal" form, which takes gender as pure and absolute, an essence which merely needs expressing. What this second form leads to is hyper-personalized genders, in the last resort a unique gender for each individual, as each individual would have their own essence needing expressing. The author finds this to be an empty liberation, since the gender-sex contradiction is never resolved. (This has striking resemblance of Marx's critique of the anti-theists in the famous "opiate of the people" in the Critique of the Philosophy of Right.)

My take-away is that gender cannot simply be abolished outright as the TERFs would like, but neither is recognition of new identities in itself liberating. Of course recognition of new identities, e.g. pronouns, is a necessary step on the road toward actual liberation from gender, which has become an oppressive institution if it ever was anything but. "Being" trans is not an absolute condition, it is a mode of being in an absolute world which demands gender. (Sorry if this comes across as too edgy, happy to hear critique on that last thought.)

excerpt:

In both of these poles [individualists and TERFs], there is a certain identifiable episteme or common sense even in their direct contradictions. Both recognize the body as a primary site of dispute, of autonomy, and of liberation — whether in presentation, reproduction, labor, or sexual desire and pleasure. Both employ a certain authenticity rhetoric, with TERFs positing gender as an external institution as being inauthentic and gender individualists positing gender liberation as the realization of one’s internal, originary essence in an authentic gendered life.

In these stances, both tend to hold to a sex-gender distinction. On the one hand, we have the “objective” category of sex — objective in the sense of literally being present in the object of the body, and in the sense of the categories being assumed to be beyond social-historical influences. On the other hand, there is the “subjective” category of gender, which is understood as variable and a site of change, whether through historical social struggle or through a realization of one’s internal, subjective self-image of authenticity.

Both make a mechanical and dogmatic separation of the unmediated “objective” scientific categories, placed beyond the social in their formation even if recognized as the object of social dispute, and the “subjective” categories, which are rendered either static dichotomies or as pure determinations of the individual. Against this modern view, here we seek to advocate for a position which emphasizes not only the sociality and historicity of gender, but to reject the two-systems approach and emphasize that this extends not only to sex but to all categories. That is because all categories, every single one, are from the perspective of human beings, even as they organize real, concrete, objective things into systems of knowledge. There is no such thing as an unmediated, primary object for a living being.___

I had a literal shower thought today about how many games, whether sport or video game or board game or puzzle, are time-based, and I wondered if that has always been the case or if time-based games have proliferated under capitalism.

The reason I think about this is I enjoy doing the NYT crossword, but I don’t understand why there needs to be a prominent timer. Why does a puzzle need to be timed? It only adds stress to something meant to be fun, and makes leisure feel like work.

There are more connections as I think about it. Role-playing games are an obvious one. Players begin their journey as isolated individuals, true Robinsonades who must forge a life on their own, standing apart from the NPC society created by the developers. The NPCs and world resources serve only as a means for player advancement. And of course, online highscores bring efficiency to the fore. It is not sufficient to advance. You must advance faster than everyone else, or be left behind. RPGs frequently involve player-to-player market economies for another layer of competition.

Were games historically this focused on time, efficiency, and competition? If so, was it to a similar degree as today?

I am not a historian but I remember reading that the ancient Olympic Games, while still being competitive, were also religious and artistic in nature, not purely athletic. The competitive aspect was because of the rise of neighboring Greek city-states which had to compete for resources, and the Olympics served as a peaceful way to blow off resultant steam. So while this is a different kind of competition from capitalist competition in the market, it’s clear that political-economic situation impacts games and how people view their leisure.

I’ll do some research on it this weekend. It’s just been in the back of my head and thought I’d share.

Image post: GOSPLAN (I think, I don't speak Russian). Found in this weird article: https://www.intellinews.com/russia-mulls-gosplan-2-0-soviet-state-orders-system-261171/

The following were found here: https://nitter.net/rarar/status/1597628735989374976

Open the images in a new tab to actually see the text

Towards a New Socialism by Cockshit and Cottrell

Participatory Economics by Hahnel and Albert

Negotiated Coordination by Devine and Adaman

Digital Socialism by Saros

If this is too close to sectarianism I get it, but I keep hearing about Marxist-Leninist-Maoists at the periphery of other discussions and all I know about them is:

• they seem to be distinct from other Maoist tendencies
• their name is often shortened to Maoist in conversation
• the tendency is at least nominally a synthesis of Mao's writings into prior ML theory, done by someone named Gonzalo
• their reputation among MLs seems to be deviant
• I think the rapper Power Struggle alludes to being one, which is my sole investment in this question

I had this in a comment on another post but I just started finding so many great quotes. I've never seen someone undertake to explain Sendero Luminoso before and I'm glad I found kites.

To call this a debate would be to overstate the claims of the PPW universalists. Debates require that both sides develop their positions and justify them with evidence, and one of the consequences of the internet is that any asshole with a keyboard and a connection can pretend to have great knowledge of revolutionary theory. But given that many millenials newly awakened to the horrors of capitalism-imperialism and looking into revolution, communism, and Maoism have encountered this “debate” online, it is worth taking this opportunity to address some real questions of revolutionary strategy that have come up along the way. These questions include:

• What can we learn from the experience of the people’s war in Peru?
• What demographic shifts have taken place since the Chinese revolution and what are their implications for revolutionary strategy?
• What is Maosim? Why are most self-proclaimed Maoists so dogmatic?
• Why has there been so much disarray in the international communist movement since the 1976 counterrevolutionary coup in China?
• What is a correct military strategy for revolution in imperialist countries?
• What is the relationship between the subjective factor and objective conditions in the revolutionary process?
• What is the nature of bourgeois state power, and how can communists in imperialist countries build up a force that can overthrow it?

The greatest weakness of Sendero Luminoso and Chairman Gonzalo is that many of its/his written statements are dogmatic as fuck. There, I said it. There is a strong religiosity emanating from many of these statements that projects a grand and godly faith in the impending victory of the revolution, even suggesting the strategic offensive of the world revolution (in the 1980s?!?), rather than a compelling, nuanced analysis of the state of the world and the prospects for and difficulties of revolution. We can understand why in the 1980s, with the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s over and following the tremendous loss of proletarian state power in China in 1976, with a religious and spiritual population as their mass base, and with the real need for revolutionary sacrifice, Sendero may have felt this approach was necessary. Maybe we can even accept it in the Buddhist sense of the term, learning to embrace and move through the negatives that are part of our historical and present-day experiences as communists, rather than ignoring or fearing them. But we don’t need to repeat it; we can take the good and leave out the bad. The PPW universalists have instead decided to take the worst attribute of Sendero Luminoso, magnify it, and shout it from the rooftops (or more accurately, click it from their keyboards).

In 1962, a young Abimael Guzmán (AKA Chairman Gonzalo) was appointed professor of philosophy at the National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga in the capital of the Ayacucho region. There, in rousing lectures that earned him the nickname “Champú,” Professor Guzmán and his comrades used their faculty positions to present students with a historical materialist understanding of society and the need for revolution. By the late 1960s, Sendero Luminoso had virtual control over the university, including administrative functions, and had a particularly strong position within the teacher’s college. They used these positions to recruit the cadre who would go on to form the backbone of the people’s war. Moreover, from the teacher’s college, they dispatched newly-minted university graduates to the surrounding peasant communities in the Ayacucho region as school teachers, where they in turn conducted social investigation and organized those peasant communities in preparation for launching the people’s war.

Gonzalo’s strategic genius was in taking advantage of the bourgeoisie’s rapid expansion of education to gain temporary footholds within the bourgeois ideological state apparatuses and use these positions to accumulate forces for revolution—in other words, in his correct reading of the conjuncture, not prophetic divination. These positions were always temporary, and Sendero lost its control over the University of Huamanga by the mid 1970s. But the damage was done, and Sendero cadre trained at the university were already organizing peasants all over Ayacucho—the region that would become the first stronghold of the people’s war in the early 1980s. Professor Guzmán took a position at La Cantuta teacher’s college on the outskirts of Lima in the mid-to-late 1970s, recruiting more teachers into Sendero’s ranks. Sendero would continue to employ this strategy in other places throughout the people’s war. For example, it deployed 100 teachers in schools in the slums of the Central Highway region east of Lima, helping the people’s war to advance towards the center of bourgeois power. Here there is a broader lesson: the bourgeoisie’s ideological hegemony over the masses is something that has to be forged and continually reforged, and at moments when the nature of this hegemony is in transition, as it was when the Peruvian bourgeoisie massively expanded education in part to bring more peripheral populations under its ideological hegemony, communists can seize opportunities.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was reestablished on 26 December 1968, coinciding with the 75th birthday of Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.

Although its ranks initially numbered around 500, the party grew quickly, supposedly due to the declaration and imposition of martial law by former president and dictator Ferdinand Marcos during his 21-year rule. By the end of Marcos rule in the country, the number of combatants had expanded to include more than 10,000 fighters.

In 2019, Sison claimed that the number of its members and supporters is growing. The organization remains an underground operation, with its primary goals being to overthrow the Philippine government through armed revolution and remove U.S. influence over the Philippines. It consists of the National Democratic Front , a coalition of other revolutionary organizations in the Philippines with aligning goals; the Kabataang Makabayan, which serves as its youth wing; and the New People's Army , which serves as its armed wing

History

Amado Guerrero, then a central committee member of Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas or PKP-1930, lead the reestablishment of the party. Jose Maria Sison, allegedly the man behind the nom de guerre Amado Guerrero, confirmed its birth at Barangay Dulacac in the tri-boundary of Alaminos, Bani and Mabini in the province of Pangasinan. This is where the CPP's "Congress of Reestablishment" was held on 26 December 1968, at a hut near the house of the Navarettes, the parents-in-law of Arthur Garcia, one of the CPP founders.

In the 1960s, a massive leftist unrest called First Quarter Storm occurred in the country to protest against the government policies, graft and corruption and decline of the economy during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos. The unrest was also inspired by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Vietnam War and other revolutionary struggles abroad against United States imperialist aggression. One of the leaders of this leftist movement was Jose Maria Sison, a founder of Kabataang Makabayan. He was soon recruited to be a member of Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP-1930). During that time the new PKP members, independently from the incumbent PKP members, were conducting clandestine theoretical and political education on Marxism–Leninism, with special attention dedicated to workers, peasants and youth.

This would eventually lead to a significant split between the PKP members. The new members advocated to resume what they regarded as the unfinished armed revolution against foreign and feudal domination, referring to the legacy and de facto continuation of the Philippine–American War of 1899, combat subjectivism and opportunism in the history of the old merger party and fight modern revisionism then being promoted by the Soviet Union. This ideology was the basis for the split from the PKP-1930, the (re)creation of the CPP, and the subsequent "Congress of Reestablishment."

Soon after its reestablishment, the Party linked up with the other cadres and commanders of the HMB and engaged them in ideological and political studies, mass work and politico-military training. On 29 March 1969, the New People's Army was established and on 24 April 1973 the National Democratic Front.

Afterwards, the CPP launched the Protracted People's War. The eventual objective is to install a "people's revolutionary government" via a two-stages revolution: National Democratic Revolution followed by a Socialist Revolution.

The reestablishment was considered by the party as the First Great Rectification Movement, criticizing the errors of the old Party. The CPP adheres to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its guiding ideology in analyzing and summing up the experience of the party and its creative application to the concrete conditions in the Philippines in fighting US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. It considers Maoism as the highest development of Marxism-Leninism.

Nowdays thet are still in a peoples War against the current Goverment of the Philippines, they have influence/control in 73 of 81 Provinces in the Philippines. Sison isnt the leader of the CPP anymore and he is currently on Exile on the netherlands.

The CPP have a website called Philippine Revolution Web Collective ( PRWC ) and it Features news and information about the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People's Army (NPA), and the Philippine revolution. they also have a Twitter Account :comrade-birdie:

Also Marco Valbuena the Chief Information Officer of the CPP also has a Twitter Account

if you are going to donate to the CPP have in mind that they are considered a Terrorist org by the USA and the EU, so try to donate to a third party instead so you dont end up in a list.

https://hexbear.net/post/158599 check out this mega about a fellow comrades new game they made themselves and give it support

Resources for Organizing your workplace/community :sabo:

Resources for Palestine :palestine-heart:

Buy coffee and learn more about the Zapatistas in Chiapas here :EZLN:

Here are some resourses on Prison Abolition :brick-police:

Foundations of Leninism :USSR:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

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Self-reliance is a revolutionary spirit and fighting Principle of independent people who shape their own destiny themselves

President Kim Il Sung was born on April 15, 1912 (the first year of the Juche era) in Pyongyang City's Mangyongdae as the first-born of Kim Hyong Jik and Kang Pan Sok. His father Kim Hyong Jik named him Song Ju (a word that means to constitute the pillar), hoping that he would become the pillar of the country.

President Kim Il Sung spent his childhood in different parts of the country and China where his parents carried out revolutionary activities. With a vision of the future, his father made him learn the Chinese language from a very young age and study in a Chinese elementary school. As a result, he came to master that language perfectly, which later served him a great help in developing the anti-Japanese struggle in Chinese territory.

In March 1923, in accordance with his father's advice that in order to carry out the revolution he should know the reality of the country, he left Badaogou in China and arrived in the native Mangyongdae (this journey on foot is called “Road of a thousand laughs for study ”) And entered the Changdok school in Chilgol where the house of his maternal grandparents is located.

In January 1925, upon receiving the unexpected news that the Japanese re-arrested his father, he resolutely left Mangyongdae with the firm decision not to return until the country's independence had been achieved.

After the death of his father, in June 1926 he enrolled in the Hwasong School, a two-year military political establishment established in Huadian by anti-Japanese nationalist organizations and on October 17 of the same year founded the Union to Defeat Imperialism (UDI ) and its responsible was elected.

With a view to further unfolding revolutionary activities, Kim Il Sung interrupted his studies at the Hwasong School six months after his admission and moved the scene of his actions to Jilin. While studying at Yuwen High School in Jilin, on August 27, 1927, he reorganized the UDI into the Anti-Imperialist Youth Union, a more comprehensive mass organization, and on August 28, he founded the Korean Communist Youth Union.

He formed various mass organizations and led the anti-Japanese struggle. He elucidated the way forward for the Korean revolution and the strategic and tactical problems to accomplish his fundamental task at the Kalun Conference held from June 30 to July 2, 1930.

On July 3, he organized the “Konsol Comrades Association”, the first party organization in Kalun, and on July 6, he founded the Korean Revolutionary Army (ERC), a political-paramilitary entity in Guyushu of the Yitong district, to make preparations for the Anti-Japanese Armed Fight.

On April 25, 1932, he proclaimed the founding of the Anti-Japanese People's Guerrilla (later reorganized into the Korean People's Revolutionary Army), led the anti-Japanese armed struggle, and thus achieved the restoration of the Homeland on August 15, 1945. the Homeland in September of the same year. On October 10, 1945, he structured the Central Organizing Committee of the Communist Party of North Korea and declared the birth of the Party to the world.

On February 8, 1946, he organized the North Korea Provisional People's Committee and was elected President and proclaimed the 20-Point Platform. In August 1946 he formed the North Korean Labor Party with the merger of the Communist Party and the Neo-Democratic Party. He successfully led the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution in a short space of time.

He constituted the North Korean People's Assembly through the first democratic elections and was elected Chairman of the North Korean People's Committee, the new central organ of state power, and presented the tasks of the transition period to socialism. In February 1948 he transformed the Korean People's Revolutionary Army into the Korean People's Army, regular revolutionary armed forces.

On September 9, 1948, he founded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the unified central government of the Korean people, and according to the unanimous will and desire of all the Korean people, he was elected Prime Minister and Head of State. On June 30, 1949, he convened the Joint Plenary of the Central Committees of the Labor Parties of North and South Korea and was elected Chairman of the Central Committee of the Labor Party of Korea.

Leading the Homeland Liberation War from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953 to brilliant victory, he safeguarded the sovereignty of the nation and started US imperialism rolling downhill. On August 5, 1953, in the VI Plenary of the CC of the Party, he presented the basic line of postwar economic construction and led the struggle to fulfill it.

At the same time, he promoted the socialist revolution aimed at transforming the relations of production in the cities and the countryside through socialism. He was reelected President of the CC of the Party in the III and IV Congresses held in April 1956 and in September 1961, respectively. He presented the new idea of ​​continued revolution and defined its main content to carry it out in three aspects: ideological, technical and cultural.

In December 1962, he convened the V Plenary of the IV Period of the Central Committee of the Party, where he proposed the new strategic line of developing in parallel the economic construction and that of national defense in view of the aggravating maneuvers provoking the new war of the US imperialists .

He successfully led the fulfillment of the historic tasks of industrialization from 1957 to 1970. He defined as the general task of the Korean revolution to transform the whole society according to the requirement of the Juche idea.

He presented the three principles of the reunification of the Fatherland in May 1972, the project for the founding of the Coryo Democratic Confederal Republic in October 1980 and the Ten-Point Program of the Great Pan-National Unity for the Reunification of the Fatherland in April 1993.

In June 1994, he received Carter, former President of the United States, in Pyongyang and thus prepared a new favorable conjuncture to carry out bilateral negotiations on the nuclear problem and the summit meeting of North and South Korea.

President Kim Il Sung, who worked selflessly for the Party and the revolution, the Fatherland and the people, for the verification of independence throughout the world, died of a sudden illness in his office, on July 8, 1994, at Two o'clock in the morning.

• With the Century - Kim Il Sung Memoirs :juche:

• Official Web page of the DPRK :juche-boi:

• Thank you, Father Kim Il Sung [HQ] :kim-salute:

Hola Camaradas :fidel-salute-big: , Our Comrades In Texas are currently passing Through some Hard times :amerikkka: so if you had some Leftover Change or are a bourgeoisie Class Traitor here are some Mutual Aid programs that you could donate to :left-unity-3:

Here is a list of Trans rights organizations you can support :cat-trans:

Here are some resourses on Prison Abolition :brick-police:

Alexander, M - ‘The New Jim Crow’ (2010)

Davis, A - ‘Are Prisons Obsolete’ (2003)

Jackson, G. - ‘Blood in My Eye’ (1972)

Vitale A.S - ‘The End of Policing’ (2017)

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/angela-y-davis-are-prisons-obsolete :angela:

Foundations of Leninism :flag-su:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:

Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:

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